Oceanside was hit particularly hard by this post-war surge in traffic. The portion of Highway 101 that ran through town along Hill Street was known as a “death trap.” Engineers suggested either widening the highway or building a new route.
 
In 1947, talk first surfaced of an express highway from Oceanside to Rose Canyon in San Diego. Plans were subsequently scaled down to a 10-mile, four-lane “bypass” that would veer inland at the San Luis Rey River and shoot straight south through Oceanside and Carlsbad before meeting up with Highway 101 again after crossing the Agua Hedionda Lagoon. Concerned for their business districts, North County leaders balked at the idea, but state highway officials, led by engineer E.E. Wallace, were determined to build the new road and ultimately prevailed.
 
The opening of the bypass in 1953 revived talk of an express highway all the way down to San Diego. At the time, the federal government was already well on its way toward establishing a nationwide network of highways, as called for by the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1944.
 
The Korean War interrupted that effort, but when the conflict was over, President Eisenhower made the interstate highways one of his top priorities. His vision was realized with the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, which authorized the expenditure of a whopping $25 billion in federal funds for highway construction between 1957 and 1969. A numbering system and the red, white and blue interstate shield were unveiled in 1957, and work began almost immediately.
 
In San Diego County, the last stretch of Interstate 5 was completed on June 21, 1966. Its 24 miles linked the existing express highway through Oceanside and Carlsbad with a previously completed section of freeway that ran through San Diego and points south, much of it following the route of Highway 101 East (the old highway had been split in the late 1930s at Torrey Pines, with a circuitous western route along the shore through La Jolla and Pacific Beach and a more straightforward eastern route on the other side of Mission Bay, along what was then called Atlantic Avenue).
 
A San Diego Union story at the time noted that “the impact was immediate. Old Highway 101, the street On the Beach, suddenly looked as if it were taken from the movie of the same name. Many service stations closed at once. Others lasted a week.”
 
Coastal towns renamed portions of the old highway to give it more of a local identity. In Del Mar, it became Camino del Mar; in Carlsbad, Carlsbad Boulevard.
 
Thirty years later, in the mid-1990s, the old road’s historical importance finally began to hit home. John Daley, who had purchased and renovated 101 Café in 1986, was on Oceanside’s historic preservation board when state officials suggested local groups such as his conduct contextual studies in preparation for the task of filing National Register applications.
 
“The context we chose was transportation,” Daley recalls, “and after the study was completed in 1997, we started reading it and realized just how important transportation, and the old highway, were to development of this region.”
 
He and fellow preservationists lobbied the state legislature, and in September 1998 lawmakers granted all of Highway 101 a historical designation. Meanwhile, Daley had been on several tours of Route 66 and launched a campaign to get similar heritage-honoring signs put up along Highway 101. Oceanside was the first community to install historical Highway 101 markers, erecting 16 signs beginning in October 1998. Other North County municipalities followed suit. Encinitas put up 12, followed by Carlsbad and Del Mar, each with half a dozen. Solana Beach recently installed its own signs, consisting only of a white shield with “HWY 101” written in black.
 
Farther south, historic Highway 101 markers are also scheduled to go up on portions of the road still extant in San Diego and National City, Daley says.
 

What’s in the old highway’s appeal? Well, first of all, it’s the scenery. Old Highway 101 creeps along the county’s oceanfront edge, affording incredible views of the blue Pacific.
 
Then there’s the rich history, the heritage of the old highway, in a portion of the country that doesn’t have an abundance of either attribute.
 
But perhaps the most significant factor in Old Highway 101’s appeal, opines the San Diego Union-Tribune’s Logan Jenkins, who calls it “one of three signature roads in the old West,” is personal imagery.
 
“To me, it’s those drives I took when I went to Los Angeles to play tennis when I was 7 or 8 years old,” Jenkins recalls. “I remember the old Torrey Pines grade, the ocean, the sunsets—and I think it’s that way for many of us who have lived in San Diego all our lives. It’s a very personal imagery that the road contains,” he says.
 
“I’ve used the phrase ‘We San Diegans talk about 101 with nostalgia bordering on illness,’ because every time I speak to groups about the highway, their eyes glisten as they remember the cars they used to drive and the experiences they used to have along the road. To paraphrase Charles Kuralt, you can drive cross-country on the freeways and never see a thing, but on the old highways it’s a completely different world.”
 
Proof of the Past
The steamroller of progress has flattened many of the original buildings and businesses that dotted Highway 101 during its heyday from the Roaring Twenties through the mid-Sixties. But not all such roadside attractions have disappeared. South to north, here are 14 highway landmarks that remain more or less unchanged, many built in the years immediately following the road’s official designation as 101.
 
Del Mar

L'Auberge Del Mar

Old Del Mar

La Paloma Theatre, 471 South Coast Highway: This beautiful Spanish-style theater was built in 1928 and, unlike so many other old movie houses, continues to show films. La Paloma is also a hotbed of live entertainment, having hosted hundreds of concerts and other stage productions over the years.
 
Leucadia
Leucadia Beach Motel, 1322 North Coast Highway: Spruced up with gray paint and fresh trim, the cabins around a horseshoe-shape courtyard don’t look their age. But this vintage auto court—typical of myriad others that dotted the old highway from San Diego through Oceanside—was built in 1928, three years after the highway was officially designated as 101. It achieved a fair amount of infamy in 1939 when a pair of lovebirds were found asphyxiated in their room due to a faulty gas heater. At the time, the motel’s name was the ominous-sounding Journey’s End. (The gas heaters, in case you were wondering, are long gone.)
 
Log Cabin Apartments, 1660 North Coast Highway: Another remnant of auto court days, this little roadside village of red cabins was built in 1935 and ever since has brought some mountain flavor to the coastal route. Famous guests, it’s said, have included Sammy Davis Jr. and Sr., both of whom were regulars in Cabin No. 5 during the Del Mar racing season in the 1960s, and a honeymooning Desi Arnaz Jr. The cabins are now apartments.
 
Carlsbad
Army-Navy Academy, 2585 Carlsbad Boulevard: This impressive Spanish-style building has served as the headquarters of the Army-Navy Academy since 1936, nine years after it was built as the Red Apple Inn.
 
Neiman’s, 2978 Carlsbad Boulevard: One-half of the old Twin Inns, which was famed for fried-chicken dinners and large chicken statues on the roof. Built in 1887 as the home of Gerard Schutte, the “father” of Carlsbad, the gorgeous Queen Anne– style mansion and its adjacent sister structure were later transformed into a restaurant and became the Twin Inns in 1919. The early clientele was invariably bound to and from Caliente; the owner “would open up the kitchen at night if you were traveling and stopped by for something to eat,” says Stephanie Dunham, docent at the Carlsbad Historical Society. The other “twin” was demolished in 1950, while the former Schutte manse continued to be known for its chicken dinners until the 1980s. Today, it’s Neiman’s, a popular restaurant and bar that’s been in business since 1989.
 
Oceanside
Oceanview Cemetery, Coast Highway just south of Oceanside Boulevard: This small cemetery, now overrun with high grasses and weeds, was established in 1895 by the International Order of Odd Fellows. Many early Oceanside pioneers were interred here. The cemetery is also one of only seven in California known to be the final resting ground for at least one Confederate Civil War veteran.
 
101 Café, 631 South Coast Highway: A mainstay of the coastal route since 1928, when it was christened with the number of the newly designated Highway 101, this art deco–style building has been a diner ever since, under various names, with a brief stint as a drive-in the 1950s.
 
John Daley and a partner bought the eatery in 1986, when it was known as Randy’s Coffee Shop, and eight years ago restored the diner to its original name and look. The interior walls are covered with vintage photos of Old Highway 101 in its heyday, and the worn leatherette booths give the café that Happy Days feel many newer “retro” diners strive for but never achieve.
 
Dolphin Hotel, 133 South Coast Highway: One of the oldest hotels in North County, this modest two-story structure, with just 25 rooms, was built in 1927. It opened as the Hotel Keisker and has since changed hands—and names—several times. Manager Howard Pitzer says the hotel caters to a mix of locals and tourists.
 
Sunshine Brooks Theater, 300 North Coast Highway: When it opened in 1936 as the Margo Theater, it was the Cadillac of local movie houses. It was the first major downtown Oceanside construction project since the start of the Great Depression, and locals celebrated by catching such hot flicks of the day as The Gay Desperado, with Ida Lupino and Leo Carillo. But by the time the Oceanside-Carlsbad bypass was built in the early 1950s, the theater had fallen into disrepair; it ended up showing pornographic movies and was later converted to a karate studio.
 
The city of Oceanside now owns the theater—named after former owner Hattie “Sunshine” Brooks, who gave the city her majority interest—and has spent nearly $1 million to renovate it. Since its grand reopening in April, the theater has been used for a variety of live performances, including school plays from nearby Oceanside High.
 
Star Theatre, 402 North Coast Highway: The Star opened in 1956 as an opulent movie palace, its garish neon-lit marquee a sign of the times, when cars had fins and neon and chrome were everywhere. The theater, like so many single-screens in the era of the multiplex, soon fell from first-run grace and later abandoned movies entirely.
 
Saved from the wrecking ball by the city of Oceanside and a local group of performing arts angels, the Star is now home to all sorts of live stage productions, including recent performances of Grease and Fiddler on the Roof
 
“After perhaps an hour of dancing [in La Jolla], when the floor became oppressively crowded, they went for a moonlight drive up the coast, turning around and heading back at the city of Oceanside. The mounting waves of the night tide foamed with phosphorus. They came rolling in from the distant depths of the ocean, striking against the shore in a steady series of thunder-like roars. On the rocky outcrops of the shore, an occasional seal gleamed blackly.”
—Jim Thompson, The Grifters
 
“It was not so interesting driving at night. No dogs to see, only the highway lighted with his headlights. Doc speeded up to finish the trip. It was about 2 o’clock when he got to La Jolla.”
—John Steinbeck, Cannery Row
 
“It’s a long drag back from Tijuana and one of the dullest drives in the state. ... The road north is as monotonous as a sailor’s chanty. You go through a town, down a hill, along a stretch of beach, through a town, down a hill, along a stretch of beach.”
—Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye